“Lighter Moments” in Karthick Ramalingam’s Flickr stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.

The Overland Mail
by Rudyard Kipling
(Foot-Service to the Hills)
In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day –
We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
Let the robber retreat [...]

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Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
Dan Albergotti
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each [...]

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Buying Wine
Sebastian Matthews
When we were boys, we had a choice: stay in the car or else
follow him into Wine Mart, that cavernous retail barn,
down aisle after aisle — California reds to Australian blends
to French dessert wines — past bins loaded like bat racks
with bottles, each with its own heraldic tag, its licked coat
of arms, trailing [...]

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Thanks to my friend Dan, I’ve found a suitable answer to my desperate question regarding music not unlike the Deadwood theme: William Elliott Whitmore.  Frankly, Mr. Whitmore, where have you been all my life?!  A bearded, tattooed man described as having “a voice that sounds like the reincarnation of an old gospel preacher from [...]

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“We have a map of the piano” in Sashamd’s Flickr stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.

Lessons from the Garden
Richard Newman
This morning little mushroom heads,
like rusted dimes on toothpick stalks,
sprang up in our flower box.
An hour later they were dead,
withered in the summer heat.
Each spore stretched out its mortal coil
through dried-up peat and city soil
to die upon [...]

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The Back Yard by Twilight
Doug Van Gundy
These are the hours I love the best:
when the golden light of summer has climbed
to the top of the abandoned building next door
and all of the neighborhood
cats have slinked from inside
the woodpile beneath the back porch
and the cicadas and katydids
and grey tree frogs begin advertising
in the cacophonous personals section [...]

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“The Color of Jazz” in Mike Bitzenhofer’s Flickr stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.
Like a Girl Saying Yes
Sebastian Matthews
‘like a girl saying yes’
is the way Condon
put it
hearing Bix’s coronet
for the first time
a mellow tone
lofted gently from the bell
of the horn
like a girl saying yes
or as Louis said
followed (no doubt)
by his cackle laugh
“I’m tellin’ you
those pretty notes
went [...]

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In Harvest
by Sophie Jewett
Mown meadows skirt the standing wheat;
I linger, for the hay is sweet,
New-cut and curing in the sun.
Like furrows, straight, the windrows run,
Fallen, gallant ranks that tossed and bent
When, yesterday, the west wind went
A-rioting through grass and grain.
To-day no least breath stirs the plain;
Only the hot air, quivering, yields
Illusive motion to the fields
Where [...]

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“Sudden Storm” in Tochis’ Flickr stream.  Licensed via the Creative Commons.

Startled by Summer
Wind Lin
The klaxon warns of the first typhoon,
and I think
how last night’s booming
thunder was already too late for spring.
The fog outside the shutter
no longer hurries us into jackets
and we suddenly discover
it’s ok to go out in short sleeves.
However,
the one thing I can’t remember:
this [...]

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Tell Me a Story
Robert Penn Warren
[ A ]
Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.
I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse.  I heard them.
I did not know what was happening in my heart.
It was the season before the [...]

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